CHRIST AS THE SEED OF DAVID BECOMING THE SON OF GOD

After the Lord went through His death and resurrection, one of His disciples said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Before the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the disciples addressed Him as Lord. This form of address is about the same as the way the people in the Old Testament addressed God. It was a general title of address among the Jews. However, since the Lord Jesus was a man, how could He be called God? This is because He was incarnated to be a man as the seed of David. This seed of David became the firstborn Son of God in resurrection. This is what Romans 1:1-4 tells us. The truth in Romans 1:1-4 is based on 2 Samuel 7:12-14. David desired to build a house for God, but God said, “Do not build a house for Me; rather, I will make you a house. And out of your house I will raise up a seed for you. I will be his Father, and he will be My son.” This corresponds to what Romans 1 says: that the seed of David became the Son of God.

GOD’S FIRSTBORN SON AND GOD’S MANY SONS

When the Bible readers, including the Jewish rabbis, come to 2 Samuel 7:12, they do not try to probe deeply into it. Was He not the seed of David? Then how did He become the Son of God? Concerning this, David gave a clear word in Psalm 2:7. There it says, “You are My Son; / Today I have begotten You.” Then in Acts 13:33 Paul gave an explanation of this word saying that it refers to the resurrection of Christ. Today I have begotten You means that on the day of resurrection the humanity of Christ was begotten by God to be the Son of God. It was from this day that the Son of God had the human nature within Him. Before that day, before His resurrection, He was merely the only begotten Son of God. As God’s only begotten Son, He had only God in Him and the divine essence; He had nothing to do with man. But through His death and in His resurrection, the man whom He had become was brought by God into divinity. This was His being begotten as the firstborn Son of God. When humans give birth, it is usually one child per birth. But Christ’s birth included a great number, not just one—He Himself. He is the Firstborn, and there are millions and millions of sons after Him. The Bible says clearly that we the saved ones have been resurrected with Him. Hence, 1 Peter 1:3 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” In Christ’s resurrection, not only was Christ with His humanity begotten as the firstborn Son, but those who had been chosen by God and redeemed through the death of Christ were born as the many sons of God. Hence, God has the firstborn Son and He also has the many sons. This is clearly told in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. In Romans 8:29 Paul said that God made His Son the Firstborn among many brothers. Hebrews 2:10 says that one day this firstborn Son, as our Captain, will bring us, the many sons, His many brothers, into glory. Hebrews 2:11-12 says that both the firstborn Son and the many sons are all of One and that He is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, “I will declare Your [the Father’s] name to My brothers.”

This is the resurrection of Christ. But this resurrection is not simple. In the resurrection of Christ, first, Jesus with His humanity was begotten to be the firstborn Son of God; second, we, the God-chosen and Christ-redeemed people, were begotten to be the many sons of God; and third, the last Adam in His humanity, who is the incarnated Jesus, became the life-giving Spirit. It was the last Adam, the incarnated Jesus, who became the life-giving Spirit; hence, the life-giving Spirit is the very Jesus Christ.

THE CONSUMMATION OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION BEING THE LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT

Hence, the consummation of Christ’s resurrection is that Christ became the life-giving Spirit. The life-giving Spirit is the incarnated Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God. Thus, by inference we say that the life-giving Spirit is the all-inclusive Christ, the processed and consummated Triune God. Today this processed Triune God has become the life-giving Spirit. Hence, this life-giving Spirit is the ultimate consummation of the Triune God. From eternity He was the Triune God with all three, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, but without having gone through the processes. What are the processes that He went through? They are the processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. In eternity the Triune God had no human element, no experiences of human living, no element of death, and no element of resurrection. Hence, He could not be considered completed. He was eternally complete but was not completed. However, the Spirit is the ultimate consummation of the Triune God. At this point the Triune God is fully completed. He is the God-man having humanity and the human living, and He passed through death and entered into resurrection. Now He has these four great elements—humanity, the experience of human living, death, and resurrection—which were not in the Triune God in eternity.

(The High Peak of the Vision and the Reality of the Body of Christ, Chapter 3, by Witness Lee)

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About Living Stream Ministry

Living Stream Ministry publishes the works of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, providing the authoritative and definitive collections of treasures from these two servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. The writings of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee focus on the enjoyment of the divine life, which all the believers possess, and on the building up of the church, the goal of God's work with man in this age.